The Year in News 2009

Welcome to the Year in News, our annual roundup of the most important, most scandalous, most hilarious, and most WTF moments of the last 12 months. This year, music news traveled faster than ever, thanks to the advent of Twitter and the ubiquity of smartphones. No matter the time of day or night, something was always happening: Somebody was retiring or reuniting or starting a fight. Some aspect of the music industry was collapsing while another was on the rise. Someone was doing something NSFW. Somebody was baking a cake shaped like Lil Wayne's head. And we were all devastated by the loss of Michael Jackson.

So enjoy our look back at 2009, and get ready for even more craziness in 2010.

JANUARY

STOOGES GUITARIST RON ASHETON, R.I.P.

____On January 6, 60-year-old Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton was found dead in his Ann Arbor home. Asheton was one of the four founding members of the Stooges, and he stayed with the band throughout its ridiculously influential initial seven-year run, from 1967 to 1974. His influence cannot be overstated: Pitchfork's Stuart Berman has credited the Stooges' collective guitar work with"help[ing] spawn every guitar-based subgenre you'll find in a reputable record store: glam, metal, punk, goth, hardcore, indie rock, shoegazer, stoner-rock and noise."

In January, we also said goodbye to Charlie Cooper, half of the New Orleans/Chicago electronic duo Telefon Tel Aviv, and British singer-songwriter John Martyn.

"SNL" JUMPS ON INDIE BANDWAGON

____After making Pitchfork's favorite album of 2008, Seattle folkies Fleet Foxes started their 2009 off right with an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" on January 17. Other indie darlings stopped by the venerable sketch comedy show last year, with TV on the Radio showing up for a (dubiously mixed) performance in February, Phoenix kickstarting their monster year by playing the untouchable one-two of "1901" and "Lisztomania" on the show's April 4 broadcast (almost two months before the release of their album), and Yeah Yeah Yeahs bringing their synth-y new sound to the program a week later. A suggestion for 2010: Battles! Come on, "SNL", make it happen.

____At the beginning of the the year we met Dead Man's Bones, aka the anthemic indie rock duo made up of Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling and his friend Zach Shields. While it's natural to be skeptical of actor-turned-musicians thanks to Keanu Reeves, Russell Crowe, Billy Bob Thornton, and more, it turns out some people really can do it all, including Gosling.

Dead Man's Bones signed with respected label Anti-, released a record filled with Arcade Fire-gone-Halloween-style rock, and invited kids dressed up as ghost skeletons to sing with them on tour. And Gosling can actually sing and play piano and guitar like a pro. If this dude can dance, he's a triple threat!

DARK WAS THE NIGHT-- QUITE POSSIBLY THE MOST INDIE COMPILATION EVER MADE

____When we announced the tracklist for charity compilation Dark Was the Night on January 15, it almost seemed fake. David Byrne, Sufjan Stevens, the Decemberists, Conor Oberst, Stuart Murdoch, Grizzly Bear, the National, Feist, Bon Iver, Cat Power, Andrew Bird, Dirty Projectors, and many, many more on the same album?! Not only was it true but the record-- curated by the National's Aaron and Bryce Dessner-- summed up the whole Indie Universe more than any other this year. Best of all, the project raised almost $700,000 for AIDS awareness organization Red Hot.

DAVID BERMAN ENDS SILVER JEWS, HATES RIGHT-WING DAD

____On January 22, Silver Jews main man David Berman announced the end of his band in a message board post: "I always said we would stop before we got bad. If I continue to record I might accidentally write the answer song to 'Shiny Happy People'." Indie fans mourned. In an odd, unrelated twist, Berman also revealed that his dad was right-wing puppetmaster Richard Berman, whom he doesn't like very much. "My father is a sort of human molester. An exploiter. A scoundrel. A world historical motherfucking son of a bitch. (sorry grandma)," he wrote.